Matt Boyd Smith is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Young Harris College. His research is focused on popular formulas in their industrial and cultural contexts. His work has been published by In Media Res, the peer-reviewed journal New Review of Film and Television Studies, and the Handbook for Comics and Graphic Narratives (De Gruyter, 2021). He has forthcoming work in edited collections on the topics of true crime, apocalyptic media, and the FX television network.
Matt is currently writing his first monograph, Trans-Media Multiplicities: Genre and Formula in the Age of Media Convergence, which examines ghost hunting TV shows, found footage horror movies, and video games, true crime podcasts and streaming series, and teen horror/thriller programming across streaming video platforms to illustrate how popular formulas circulate and are used within the industrial and cultural logics of the Twenty-first Century.
He has extensive teaching experience in higher education, including courses in film and television history, media theory, film theory, genre studies, media literacy, global media, and media industries. He is an active member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), and is currently serving a three-year term on the board for the TV Studies Scholarly Interest Group for that organization. His other interests include comics studies, horror, transnational media, and war and media studies.
Outside of academia, Matt has worked as a programmer, moderator, and panelist for the Dragon Con International Film Festival, a member of the screening committee for the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, and for the TCM Classic Film Festival as part of the Marketing and Branding division of Turner Classic Movies.